viernes, mayo 09, 2008

"Peshawar - A high school for girls in Pakistan's north-west Swat district was largely destroyed after militants set it ablaze in an overnight raid, police and officials said on Sunday.

Around 50 rebels entered the school in the conflict-hit Charbagh area, located some 150 kilometres from the city of Peshawar, shortly after Saturday's midnight and used petrol bombs to destroy the library and nine other rooms in the building, the police said.

'The masked men directed me to remove all the copies of Koran (the holy book of Islamic religion) and then set the school on fire,' a watchman, Toti Gul, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa."

The militants also planted homemade bombs in the school's science laboratory; however, they did not go off and were later defused by a bomb disposal squad, the watchman said.

A number of attacks on girls' schools have been reported in the past and these were believed to be carried out by pro-Taliban fighters commanded by a local radical cleric, Maulana Fazlullah.

'The militants were bold enough to stay at the school for at least 20 minutes to see the building burn out,' Gul said.